Flecken, M. 1 , Andermann, M. 2 & Stutterheim, C. 1
1 Seminar für Deutsch als Fremdsprachenphilologie. University of Heidelberg. Heidelberg. Germany
2 Department of neurology. University of Heidelberg. Heidelberg. Germany
This study deals with the interrelation between patterns in gaze movement when watching dynamic video clips and what is mentioned at what point, when talking about events. Studies on this interrelation, and the factors that drive it, have centred on the production of single words when relating to events in still pictures, showing that speakers tend to fixate the entity to which they are relating (Meyer & Dobel, 2003). There are few studies, however, on gaze movement and patterns of mention in relation to the production of full length event descriptions, based on dynamic stimuli (e.g. Papafragou et al, 2008). This interrelation was investigated in the present study with respect to dynamic, live-recorded video clips, depicting everyday causative events, in which an agent is in the process of making a specific object (e.g. knitting a scarf). Speakers of Dutch, English and German were asked to view the clips and tell what is happening. Subjects’ gaze movement patterns were recorded before and during verbalization, and attention distribution to different aspects of the clips was measured, time-locked to speech onset, in two identified areas of interest: the area where the agent is located and the area in which the entity acted upon is located. Contrary to studies on the production of single words, or clauses relating to pictures, gaze movement to the areas of interest and the time at which they are mentioned are not directly linked, given real time presentations. Factors that drive attention and mention over time cross-linguistically will be presented. Findings show how language-specific factors involving grammatical determinants, such as aspectual morphology and the temporal concepts encoded (event viewed aspectually as ‘in progression’ or not), lead to different patterns of attention/mention over time.